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Welcome to Studio61.org.uk

We are Studio 61, an amateur theatre group based in west Wolverhampton, performing a wide range of drama and we welcome new members and new audiences.

Following our move to The Victory Hall in Lower Penn we are presented with some new challenges and opportunities in our stage sets. We perform a wide variety of drama, favouring ‘black box’ and ‘in the round’ presentation so if you are experienced in, or have a particular interest in, innovative set design and construction we should be excited to hear from you.

2014 in Review

We started 2014 with a radio play of Jekyll and Hyde by Leonard H. Caddy. This adaption of the Robert Louis Stevenson short story “Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde” was directed by Maggie Smith and transported our audience back to a 1935 radio broadcast studio featuring an array of radio actors, sound stagehands and, during one performance, a scene-stealing butterfly.

Embracing the summer, our June production featured seven of our actresses in four one-act seaside plays in Jean McConnell’s Deckchairs II directed by Martin Smith. The comedy plays introduced our audience to two factory-workers on a company trip to a nudist beach and two actresses verbally spar on the beach by the pier. The two dramas followed two sister’s bickering and playing cards on the beach by their manor house and a retired head teacher and a social worker discussing her prospects of her admittance to the retirement home. It was a very well received production, with particular praise extended to Patricia Boyd, who mastered challenging roles in two of the four plays.

We rounded off the year with our November production paying tribute to the centenary of the start of the First World War. Moving slightly towards the operatic, Ian Howarth directed Oh What a Lovely War by Jean Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop featuring all manner of singing and dancing. As a very ambitious project, this production included TV screens featuring pictures, videos and information about “The Great War”, a very large cast of pierrots and live music from Martin Fox and guest singers Ron Beardsmore and Leuan Parry Jones.

2013 in Review

We began 2013 with a February double bill of one act plays, A Man of Letters by Tim Firth and A Respectable Funeral by Jimmie Chinn. A duo of new directors for Studio 61 were found in Ray Manning and Sarah Carter and two small but strong casts told the stories of both sign-mounting, amateur crime writer Frank and three sisters, Joyce, Greta and Evadne, mourning the passing of their mother.

In June we performed the last of Alan Ayckbourn’s “The Norman Conquests” trilogy, Round and Round the Garden. Andy Alsop directed this cast of six in the story of Norman’s misguided attempt at a saucy weekend away with his sister-in-law, as seen from the garden.

And finally, in later November Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The School for Scandal was dragged out of the 1700s and launched into the 21st Century, helmed by Jane Fosbrook. Gossip spread via BlackBerrys and the potential threat of Lady Teazle’s rumoured philandering airing on Twitter helped bring this classic restoration comedy right up to date.

2015 Productions

The Weir

The Weir by Conor McPherson

19th-22nd February
“There’s no dark like a winter night in the country. And there was a wind like this one tonight, howling and whistling in off the sea.”

All My Sons by Arthur Miller

12th-14th June
The story concerns the fortunes of the Keller and Deever families. During the war, Joe Keller and Steve Deever ran a machine shop which made aeroplane parts.

More Information Coming Soon…The White Devil

The White Devil by John Webster

20th-22nd November
John Webster’s first independent play, The White Devil centres on the beautiful Vittoria Corombona and her lover, Duke Brachiano, whose passionate, adulterous affair unleashes the powerful revenge of their enemies.